Queen's Birthday Honours List: Keira Knightley and Mary Beard among increasing number of women recognised

The renowned historian and broadcaster Professor Mary Beard and the film star Keira Knightley have received two of the country’s highest honours following rows over the number of such honours given to women.

Prof Beard, Professor of Classics at Cambridge University and presenter of BBC’s Front Row Late and Civilisations, is being made a Dame for her services to the study of classical civilisation, along with Emma Thompson. Knightley receives an OBE.

The proportion of women receiving the highest level of awards in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List has risen to 41 per cent this year, compared to 39 per cent in the most recent New Year’s Honours List.

But the improvement is particularly pronounced when compared to 2015 when just seven Dames were created in the Birthday Honours, compared to 33 knighthoods.

This year there are 11 Dames and 21 Knights and the number of women receiving the higher awards of CBE and above has risen by ten per cent in the past three years.

The shift is part of a deliberate move to reflect the increasingly prominent role of women in public life and comes on the 100th anniversary of the first women being given the vote.

Prof Beard - who has described her on-screen appearance as “slightly creaky old lady with long grey hair” - has long used her role as a broadcaster to challenge the way women in the public eye are expected to be portrayed and has frequently been subjected to vicious comment on social media as a result.

She was also once described by the late TV critic AA Gill as “too ugly for television", but she responded in characteristic style, accusing him of being part of "the blokeish culture that loves to decry clever women".

But she drew criticism from fellow feminists after suggesting it would be hard to sustain ‘civilised’ values in a disaster zone” such as Haiti, following revelations that Oxfam aid workers there had allegedly taken part in the sexual abuse of women and children.

Dame Mary said: "It is of course a smashing honour. I feel especially pleased that someone working on the ancient classical world gets honoured in this way.

"I'd like to treat it as a bit of a tribute to the Greeks and Romans themselves - as well as to all my wonderful academic colleagues."

She added: "I have lived through a gender revolution in my lifetime...but there is still a hell of a long way to go."

Knightley receives an OBE for her services to drama and charity some 16 years after bursting onto the scene playing a football mad teenager in Bend It Like Beckham.

She was nominated for an Oscar in 2006, as best actress for Pride & Prejudice, and again for best supporting actress for The Imitation Game in 2015 and has gone on to work with several charities and campaign groups, including Amnesty International, Unicef and Comic Relief.

Also receiving a Damehood is the actress Emma Thompson, while Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, the soprano, becomes a Companion of Honour.

Other women recognised in the list include the lawyer and businesswoman Margaret Casely-Hayford, who is made a CBE for her work in pushing for greater number of women to be represented in company boardrooms.

Dr Frances Carolyn Saunders becomes a Dame after working to encourage more women and young people from all backgrounds to go into science, technology and engineering.

Another pioneering woman recognised in this year’s Birthday Honours is Kathleen Moore, who became a carpenter after leaving school - only to find herself “the only woman on site” - and went on to set up Women Into Construction (WIC), to encourage and train women to go into what has traditionally been a male industry.

Ms Moore, who is made a MBE, said of her own experience: “The women in the class would be really enthused, but at the end of the course it would the guys that got the jobs. I thought it was time we did something about this.”

Overall just under half (49 per cent) of the 1,057 individuals recognised in this year’s Birthday Honours are women.

A Cabinet Office source said: “In the 100th anniversary year of women’s suffrage, there is a range of awards for women at the forefront of their professions who have championed women’s rights.”

Lifelong poppy seller honoured

A pensioner who has devoted her life to selling poppies for wounded veterans has become the oldest woman in living memory to receive an honour.

Rosemary Powell becomes a MBE at the age of 103, in recognition of her charitable services, having spent an incredible 97 years volunteering for the Royal British Legion.

She began helping her mother Evelyn sell poppies on Richmond Bridge, in south west London, for the Legion's first Poppy Appeal in 1921, when she was  just six.

From 1975 to the mid-1990s, Mrs Powell lived in France with her husband Selwyn, a Royal Navy officer, and sold blue cornflowers, the French equivalent to British poppies.

She even continued selling poppies after moving into a nursing home three years ago.

News of the award comes a few days after Mrs Powell, who lost two godfathers and three uncles during the First World War decided to retire from her fundraising activities.

“Collecting has kept me going all these years," she said. “It has always been a very important cause for me," she said.  We did it in memory of those men who were killed, for their sacrifice."

Mrs Powell’s first fiance, Robin Ellis, a commander in the Royal Navy, died in 1944 when the Lancaster bomber he was flying in crashed near Inverness, and her younger brother Peter, a major in the Army, died during the Second World War.

Her son Giles said: "The MBE is a tremendous reward for years and years of hard work and loyalty.

"Mum is absolutely over the moon. It's great recognition for a lot of hard work."

Her other son Nick added: "There is no doubt that she was inspired by the terrible loss her mother suffered, as well as her own personal loss of her fiance, Robin Ellis."

'Honours recognition for migrants makes us feel included'

A community activist who campaigns for more Muslim women to take part in public life has said that honouring migrants helps give them an equal stake in British society.

Akeela Ahmed, who receives a MBE for her work in encouraging Muslim women to vote, said her recognition in the Queen’s Birthday Honours sent a powerful signal about social cohesion and inclusivity.

Mrs Ahmed said: “For me, as a second generation migrant, to receive an honour is so important for migrants generally to be able to say we are here and we are as much a part of this country as anyone else and we are as proud as anyone else to be recognised.”

“My real hope is that they realise it doesn't matter if you’re a woman of colour, you can have your achievement recognised and valued.”

This year ten percent of honours recipients come from a black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) background, roughly the same as last year.

Mrs Ahmed, 39, founded an online forum called She Speaks, We Hear four years ago to encourage Muslim women to speak out about issues which matter to them after she became increasingly disenchanted with the way they were being portrayed in the media.

She made it her mission to urge women from the Muslim women to exercise their franchise, in the face of assertions from extremist groups that voting is against Islam.

“It’s really important that women from different communities feel they can take part in all areas of society,” she said. “So often their stories and voices go unheard.”

Mrs Ahmed said she was so shocked at receiving the letter informing her of the award that she had to ask her husband to read it, just to make sure.